


hide your courage

by Druddigonite



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: F/M, empath!bede, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:13:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23780614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Druddigonite/pseuds/Druddigonite
Summary: Rule Number One: Never talk about your ability.Rule Number Two: Avoid touching anyone unless absolutely necessary.Crack-taken-seriously AU where Bede feels feelings
Relationships: Beet | Bede/Yuuri | Gloria
Comments: 2
Kudos: 70





	hide your courage

**Author's Note:**

> this idea popped into my head out of nowhere and held me by the throat until i finished writing it

> Nervousness, worry; something heavy building up in the heart, weighed down like a lagging tail; the bearer of bad news. Guilt. 

  
Bede lifts his arm the second Gloria makes a move to get up from the couch.

“Leaving?” he says. 

“Yeah.” It’s little more than an act nowadays, less for his benefit than Gloria’s. “Going to take at least a week to travel to and from the dynamax sightings they want me to investigate, and I’d rather arrive back in time to catch the tail end of that fair you’re helping set up.” 

She’s wading her way around the coffee table when he grabs her hand.

> Guilt, stronger now. Concern, rolling off in waves; can’t take deep breaths when the water line’s over your head. Resolve, don’t look back. No fear. 

  
No fear? Fear and concern usually go hand in hand. If she’s worried about running into a dangerous situation, why isn’t she scared about it?

It takes him a second to realize she’s worried over _him_. 

“I’m not mad at you,” he blurts out, “This is your job, you’re the only one qualified enough to handle dens over five stars, and you’re doing it so Galar can be safe. I’d be an idiot to get mad at that.” 

“I know, I just wish it doesn’t have to be like thi—” Gloria cuts herself off in the middle of her sentence. 

_Doesn’t have to be like this._ There were a lot of things that didn't have to be: Bede’s disqualification, the Eternatus incident, Gloria’s stepping down a year into her championship. Wistful ideations did not rewrite the stars. Both have learned that lesson the hard way.

> Melancholy. Guilt loses its edge, dips down into resignation. 

  
She’s staring at the cluster of mushrooms starting to grow from the ceiling, glowing gentle hues of pink, blue, and green. For the umpteenth time, Bede wishes he could read thoughts instead of emotions. _Doesn’t have to be like this._

He sighs, lets go of her hand. “Come on. I’ll come to see you off at Hammerlocke.”

* * *

Rule Number One: Never talk about your ability. 

Rule Number Two: Avoid touching anyone unless absolutely necessary.

Those were the two fundamental laws Bede set for himself during his time in the orphanage. Few children were in a happy headspace. Stories too grotesque to be put into words, stark terror and raw emotion. They blurred together to the point where he stopped caring—stopped reaching out, beat or intimidated anyone who tried. He withdrew. 

Compassion fatigue, he’d heard the social workers discuss, after his main caretaker quit. Emotional exhaustion leading to a decreased ability to feel empathy for others. The cost of care. 

He often wondered if he had that too; other children’s emotions were often so strong they washed away his own, leaving a dull ringing in his ears after he lost contact. Or maybe he’d always been like this. 

The first rule was broken when he accused his foster father of cheating, when he gave him a slap on the back after coming home from “work”. A day later he was picked up by Oleana, and told he’d shake hands with Macro Cosmos’s pawns during meetings. 

The second rule spiralled downwards when he accidentally bumped into a challenger, back in Galar Mine No 1. 

_It’s such a hassle._ So much easier to hate someone when he doesn’t know them. Rose is a man brimming with hope for the future, too bright to hold in a handshake for long. Oleana, once her obsessiveness and exhaustion and contempt for Bede had been whittled away from the manicured fingernails digging into his shoulder, is a woman who adores her saviour since the day he took her off the streets. He remembers the pity officers doled against his skin when they had to restrain him to be brought back to the orphanage, the desperation of a slipping boy when Hop’s knuckles bit into his lip. 

So much easier to hate when they aren’t all so _human_.

* * *

In Ballonlea, where the sun fails to filter through the thick canopy of trees, time loses its grip. There is no such thing as a day and night cycle when all light comes from bioluminescent mushrooms, shining here before you were born and after you leave. 

Hammerlocke, in contrast, is bathed in the light of the sun. Dying rays outline castle walls against a wash of red and gold, and shadows stretch over corners, gothic. The air is warm; he’d read somewhere that the obsidian masonry was designed to absorb heat during the day and release it at night, which saves them from temperature fluctuations as a mainland city near the wild area. 

Bede is the first to arrive at the pokemon centre, teleported by his hatterene. 

Gloria wouldn’t arrive in a few minutes—she always liked taking the corvitaxi, watching the region pass by beneath her. Bede would accompany her if he didn’t have motion sickness. The last time they rode together had been...messy. 

He’s flipping through a curry catalogue in the lobby when she bursts in, windblown hair and old leather bag and all. 

“Sorry, I had to take a detour to get my stuff. Completely forgot about that, or I’d have brought them to your house.” Golisopod lumbers in after, bags comically hanging on its upturned scutes. “Hope you didn’t wait long?” 

Bede checks his rotom-phone. Half an hour, but she doesn’t need to know that. “Yes, a whole two fucking minutes. I thought you were fine spending a month in the woods wearing the same clothes, eating berries and roots like a neanderthal.” 

“Oh, I hope Sylveon pukes on your pillow tonight.” The jab didn’t have much force to it, and he doesn’t need to touch her to see her stress; they’ve been around each other long enough for him to notice the incessant tic of her right foot, how she keeps running one hand over another as a soothing gesture, in the absence of his. 

(It’s endearing. He usually looks down at people who fail to disguise their fears, sees them as weak of will, but this is _Gloria_. She’s the girl who’d faced and captured gods, the girl known to take on the most unstable regions of the wild area and come out alive; she’s also the girl who released them after making sure they wouldn’t cause harm, the girl fretting not because she might be risking her life, but because Bede will miss her.) 

He sees her off at the Hammerlocke gates. 

Save for a few stragglers, the streets are empty. Gloria has her back to him, checking maps, while her golisopod is already making its way down the stairs. The gap between them seems to be growing wider, and he wants nothing more than to reach for her shoulder. 

That would be crossing a boundary. They’d talked extensively about his ability, and she’d said yes, it’s okay to touch her, she had nothing to hide from him. But just because he has her consent doesn’t mean he’s privy to her feelings at the moment. 

Gloria closes her map, taking one step down the stairs.

Another step. Stops. 

She looks back. 

Whatever she sees on Bede’s face makes her turn around and run towards him. He doesn’t get a single word in before she throws her arms around him, almost barreling him over.

> Courage, the strength to keep walking even though each step is a battle; confidence, the rain that washes away all doubt; hope, the fiercest of them all, a steady mantra of _We’ll Be Okay_.

  
He grips her tight, wishes for once he could speak his emotions like she’s speaking hers. Settles for balling all his conviction into a whisper. “You’re going to do phenomenal, you’re going to pummel whatever that dynamax pokemon is without breaking a sweat, and I’ll wake up a week from now with a million messages of how you kicked their ass. Don’t worry about me.”

He can feel her smile from the shift of her cheek. “And I’m going to come back to Ballonlea’s first town fair sensationalised on the headlines of every media site, and finally get to ride on a ferris wheel that isn’t always ‘out of order’ like Wyndon’s is, because you did a great job bossing people and pokemon around. Don’t worry about me.” 

"No worries," he promises.

They let go. 

Gloria heads down the stairs to her golisopod. His skin burns warm as he watches them meet up, as she rounds the corner, until she’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> for more drabbles and ramblings check out my [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/druddigoon)


End file.
